Quaker Updates

As 2024 draws to a close, we are pausing to reflect on the remarkable strength and dedication of this community. You have played a critical role in connecting the concerns of Friends in your meeting or church with advocacy with federal policymakers. I am so grateful to work with all of you.  

Through prayerful listening and active participation, you have shown up in powerful ways – speaking out for peace, justice, and integrity in our local and national communities.  

The World We Seek guides the efforts of the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Whether through our team of expert lobbyists meeting with policymakers on Capitol Hill or our grassroots network of passionate advocates building power for the voices of people across the country, these words form a foundation for our work.

We are seeking a peaceful, equitable, and just world. We bring this vision into reality by working in coalition with like-minded organizations and friends to confront systemic racism in our communities.

FCNL is creating a cadre of grassroot racial justice changemakers through our work with Quaker Coalition to Uproot Racism (QCUR). This is a collaborative project that includes FCNL and five other national Quaker organizations – American Friends Service Committee, Friends Council on Education, Friends General Conference, Pendle Hill, and Quaker Voluntary Service.

With election day quickly approaching, the voices of ordinary voters matter even more as we decide who is going to represent us in Congress in 2025.

Earlier this week we urged our network to engage with candidates for office and got a great response. It was exciting to see your passion for this work. Candidates can impact our communities, and you can influence their priorities.

People who are new to FCNL often ask me how we decide where to focus. Amid concerns for a wide variety of issues for peace and justice, how does FCNL discern where to concentrate our efforts to impact federal policy?

At the end of July 2024, I spent a week at Quaker House at the Chautauqua Institute in western New York.

As violence escalates and reverberates in the Middle East, Friends feel a call to act. For many, that action includes working in their own community to distill their grief, fear, confusion, and concern into a collective and corporate statement of belief and action. Friends call these statements “minutes.” 

“In the way of peace, we urge all people, including those who hold political power, to set aside violence and aggression and to seek humane and compassionate ways of resolving conflict.”

As we look toward the next eight decades—or even the next five years—we wonder how to remain brave and constant amid deep partisan divides, ongoing horrors of war, racism, xenophobia, and an environment in crisis. Being still during some of our most trying times has enabled us to hear, recalibrate, and think deeply, instead of being strictly reactionary.

Quakers are particularly known for a testimony to peace. But what does a peace testimony mean for individuals and Quaker communities and organizations like FCNL?